G2 Analyses of Books. [July, 



bodies. He showed me his table of symbols, and the weight of the 

 atoms of six or eight bodies, in 1804 ; and I believe the same year 

 explained the subject in London, in a course of lectures delivered in 

 the Royal Institution. The subject could scarcely be broached 

 sooner. But about the same time several other persons had been 

 struck with the numbers in my table of metallic oxides, published 

 in my Chemistry; and the doctrine would have certainly been started 

 by others, if Dalton had missed it. — TV 



'• If Dr. Thomson thought so much of my work on phlogiston, 

 as he, erroneously, is pleased to call it, why not take notice of it 

 in his Chemistry ? As a compiler, he should not have passed it 

 over. 



" This curious note of his accounts for the omission. He wished 

 to leave the work itself in undisturbed oblivion ; but whatever was 

 valuable in it he generously chose to bestow on Mr. Dalton. 



' When he wrote, metallic oxides, &c.' 



" When I wrote I was as well acquainted with metallic oxides as 

 I am at this moment;* and I was the first that established ' the 

 grand J act that oxygen, &c. always unite in determinate propor- 

 tions, which are multiples of the minimum proportion,' as almost 

 every page of this essay, which relates to the subject, will prove. 



' The atomic theory was taught by Bergman, Cullen, Black,' &c. 



" I have read the works of those chemists repeatedly, and I have 

 not met with a single page that relates to the atomic theory. Were 

 these philosophers now in existence, they would shrink from the 

 compliment with honest indignation. 



' The latter, indeed, states some striking facts respecting the gases, 

 and anticipated Gay-Lussac's theory of volumes.' 



" I have also attended to their particles, and to the relative 

 weight of the particles and atoms of the different gases, as may be 

 seen in many pages of this essay. 



1 But Mr. Dalton first generalized the doctrine,' &c. 



" The doctrine was as extensively applied by me ; and what is 

 still more important, it was founded on well chosen facts and ma- 

 thematical demonstrations, which Dalton omitted for reasons best 

 known to himself. In a word, it will be found that Dalton has not 

 done justice to my doctrine, with all his ingenuity; and his attempt 

 to weigh a few atoms, no matter how, or whether he is correct or 

 not, gives him no claim whatever to the system, which I established 

 several years before he or Dr. T. were known as chemical writers. 



* The subject could scarcely be broached sooner.' 



" This and the remaining part of the Doctor's note exhibit such 

 self-evident misrepresentations, that I need not say a single word on 



* " See the following pages in this essay, viz. 70, 110,117, and 163: and in 

 Comp. View, 229, '220. 



" It is trje, at the time I wrote, I thought the ultimate particles of mrnt 

 met.iU were capable of uniting to three particles of oxygen. 1 am now of opinion 

 that theie are but two distinct oxides of any one metal, and that the mistake of 

 modern writers arises from a mixture of those oxides in different proportions." 



